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Can you imagine your children rushing to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, oohiing and aahing over the gifts and then rushing out to play without opening any of them? They repeat this process for several days until time for the tree to come down, and the gifts wind up in a closet, never having been opened. That is essentially what many Christians have done regarding their Spiritual Gifts. They may have read about Spiritual gifts in Romans and I Corinthians and Ephesians, but it has not dawned on them that they have the responsibility for discovering, unwrapping, developing and using their specific gifts for the glory of God and His Kingdom. Churches suffer because people are sitting in the pews, having never unwrapped the gifts that God has actually given to the church through the members. Often you'll hear someone ask, "Why can't we get someone to do..." It never registers that the "someone" could well be them.
My contention is that if a churc…

I'm sure that you have heard the saying often attributed to Casey Stengel "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings." The truth of the matter is that nothing is ever over until God says it is. Before we even know the full truth of any situation, we must see it from God's perspective. Most of us view our circumstances from the inside out. When we look around us all we see is the situation in which we find ourselves. However, if we could get the view of God, who sees the end and the beginning at the same time, we would have a different slant altogether. I have found that when I embrace the idea that God is in control then I can relax until He gives me an assignment. Once I have a clear assignment from Him then I can focus on that and leave the results to Him.
Scripture gives us story after story where reality was different from what people in the story thought. When Jesus was asleep in the boat in the midst of a storm, the disciples THOUGHT they were perish…

There is an old saying, "When a person's work is something they love, they never work a day in their life." I can truly say that I love what I do. However there are some ancillary things attached to my work that take some of the enjoyment out of it. Most of the "joy-killers" are of my own making. That is to say, they are not necessarily part of my job description, but they are activities or responsibilities that I think others expect me to fulfill.In an effort to divorce myself from expectations that I have placed on myself, I'm meditating on Paul's exhortation in Colossians 3:23 "Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men." (HCSB) I'm thinking of how best to implement this in my life. What I've settled on is asking myself this question whenever I'm in doubt about the nagging sense that I should be doing something. "Is this something that God has said in His Word that I shoul…